Learn SharePoint 2013 & Office 365 @ Microsoft Virtual Academy

Developers and IT Professionals have always had Channel 9 and MSDN available for their learning needs. Now it’s time to take their learning up a notch. Enter Microsoft Virtual Academy – the new go-to place for live and on-demand training courses across the entire developer and IT Pro platform designed to give learners a jump start into new technologies and/or help them understand the knowledge required for specific Microsoft certification exams. Visitors can choose to take full day-long courses or take selected modules from courses based on areas of interests.

The courses below are the SharePoint specific ones that I highly recommend :

Course Name

Description

URL

Tuning SQL Server 2012 for SharePoint 2013 Jump Start

SQL Server stores most of the data for SharePoint. This Jump Start training focuses on how these two products are integrated. Join two of the industry’s most popular SharePoint experts, Bill Baer and Brian Alderman on an exploration of SQL Server settings, SQL Server system database settings and configuration options that will improve SharePoint 2013 performance, availability and security. Enjoy this demo filled Jump Start to help you optimize SQL Server 2012 deployment to protect your SharePoint environment.

Apps for Office and SharePoint

The new apps for Office provide an improved experience within Office applications by integrating rich content and services from the web. An app for Office is basically a webpage that is hosted inside an Office client application. You can use apps to extend the functionality of a document, email message, meeting request, or appointment. The apps for SharePoint provide a new method to deliver specific information or functionality to a SharePoint site. In this Jump Start, you’ll see some examples of apps for Office and SharePoint and learn what they can do. You’ll learn how to acquire and manage apps. You’ll learn more about the types of apps for Office and the applications that support them. You’ll also find out how to make apps for Office available to users, how to manage them by using Group Policy settings or the registry, and how to monitor them by using Telemetry Dashboard.

Introduction to SharePoint

Experience some of the new ways SharePoint Online simplifies how you interact with your team and across your enterprise. Learn how new search capabilities help you discover and organize information, manage the results, and take immediate action to be more productive. Learn how to create content, control the policies that govern content management, and protect your organization by ensuring compliance. Learn how to extend the collaborative power of SharePoint Online by using it with Yammer – the enterprise social network.

SharePoint Online Overview for IT Pros

In this guide, you’ll see how SharePoint Online provides powerful new controls that allow IT departments to manage cost, risk, and their time. See how SharePoint Online provides powerful new controls that allow IT departments to manage cost, risk, and their time.

The new business intelligence features available in Microsoft Office and SharePoint 2013 provide greater insight that can be easily shared across the organization, all while using familiar tools.

Are you a developer for the Microsoft platform, interested in helping your organization collaborate and manage workflow using SharePoint solutions? Take this course to learn the core skills common to most SharePoint development activities. Find out how to work with backend data and front end user interfaces and security. You’ll get some guidelines and best practices that will help you optimize your SharePoint applications. You’ll see some cool demos that will show you how to create an app, deploy it to a catalog, and install it. And you’ll see workflows inside the dramatically enhanced SharePoint Designer. This Jump Start will help you prepare for Exam 70-488.